Probably does, though it did not seem to fit well with current Science and Medicine discussions when I looked at it. Yes, it is clear that rooftop solar has become the problem but gas peaking, particularly in WA will have to be a big part of the solution. WA has no economically accessible sites for hydro and not a lot of rain either within the SWIS. Batteries? JL, you are always suggesting batteries. Here's some very simple maths for you. Imagine a world where there is no baseload capacity, it has all been shut down. Imagine [to make the maths easier] that demand is constant throughout every 24 hour period. So you have these giant batteries in the grid with enough capacity to sustain their rated capacity per hour for two hours, which is common, and the total capacity of all the batteries equals the network's total demand for two hours. So an event comes along, say a wind drought at night, that requires the batteries to all kick in. All good, supply maintained. Then after two hours all the batteries go flat and the network collapses. So people put their minds to the problem and ask themselves what would be the longest time that batteries, if that's all there were, would have to carry the full network load? Well, certainly overnight and potentially three or four days if an extra-tropical cyclone comes barrelling down the coast into the SWIS and it is too windy for wind turbines and too cloudy for solar. Plus maybe another day in reserve. Answers will vary. Consultants are welcome to put their answers on the back of an envelope. But let's say four days of capacity will just cover every contingency, before you need something, anything to recharge those batteries, the self-charging battery having not yet been invented. It is mathematically simple, trivial even, to say that for every day big batteries are supplying this network's total load by themselves you'd need twelve times as many of them, to bring them on sequentially, as what would be needed to supply a two hour period. So for a four day period you would need [hang on a minute - I need to take my shoes off to use my toes] 48 times as many big battery installations as you would for a two hour event. A bit expensive to have all that capacity installed, just for a once in several year event, don't you think? All that energy intensive lithium. The Chinese battery manufacturers would hug you though. What else can we use to get the network through this? Gas peaking? Of course! Why didn't we think of that! There are a couple of random loose ends from The Other Place I'll take this opportunity to tidy up. JL You ask why only 1P Reserves are being considered. It's because 1P have the highest level of confidence and because STX is currently proposing a business case to Macquarie and that's what MacQ need to know. I have no doubt that the calculations for the plant would have started with the 1P Reserves and worked backwards through % usage and consumption, to end up answering the ultimate question "How many Jenbachers do we buy?" Might I also say, though it's irrelevant, that I have personally not given up on SE3 and SE2, the other two wells in that field so far, even in the face of all the 'expert opinion' in The Other Place. I am heartened by the current experience of ADX, a little ASX Listed Company with oil and gas interests in Europe. Their Anshof-2 oil well in Upper Austria hit water unexpectedly [is it ever expected?]. But after scratching their heads for a few months they went back down the hole to a higher point and then went off 'sideways' at about 30 degrees dip back into the reservoir and above the water. Results pending, but looks promising. I think that's the medium term solution for the SE field, but with so much currently going on for STX it has to wait its turn. Please don't mistake me for a drilling expert though. Just my uneducated opinion. if kmuirhead turns up, I wasn't questioning Jenbacher efficiency. I was asking who was claiming simple gas turbine efficiency was the "20-35%" you wrote. Maybe when Frank Whittle was a boy GTs had that efficiency but Jenbacher's modern competitors all run in the high 30%s and possibly even 40%. They have to, or they wouldn't sell any. Yes a difference which will obviously deplete those 1P Reserves faster, but as STX own their own gas and it is priced accordingly, efficiency isn't as important , IMO, as it would be if STX were paying market rates. There are two ways to deal with GT power loss due to increasing temperature. First way was neatly set out in the 'MidWest' article above which is to use inlet cooling. Most of the time throughout the year temperatures at the site are probably reasonable. But of course there are those baking summer days where you'd be switching in the inlet cooler to regain performance, as needed. As the article says, you'd need a reasonable supply of quality water, something STX seems to be good at finding . Second method is to buy 10% [approx] more power than you would ordinarily need so that on 45 degree days you can still get rated power out of your GT. Then on cooler days you just back off the throttle a little to achieve the rated thrust. Seems like the power generation world mostly use inlet cooling, as the best solution. Airlines generally use Method 2, though water injection is not unknown, in the airline case not into the inlet but direct into the combustion chamber. I'm thinking 20 Jenbachers clanking away in a big, enclosed shed are going to generate a lot of heat on summer days also but then they have coolant and radiators with fans. The bloke with the spanners going around fixing things is going to need one of those personal fans. Or maybe they'll be needing water for the evaporative air conditioning. JL we are all 'talking to the hand' here, quite clearly. By the time Shareholders even heard about the possibility of a peaking plant, which if I recall first turned up in a note from Euroz Hartleys, the die was pretty much cast. I agree with someone else in The Other Place who suggested that the proposal might have originated from the supplier who identified a need, and not through a consultative process. Pluses and minuses I guess. STX are dealing with people they already know and don't have to work through a labyrinth of choices. They don't have to establish a relationship with GE Verona or Mitsubishi [for example] which takes time and effort, then get one's head around all the various possibilities and concepts, just as we are all doing here. A final general point. This is a public forum. Defamation is a real thing. It's one thing to make a criticism of a process, quite another to make certain further inferences, although truth is a defence. Stay safe. JL some good points to discuss in your lengthy post above. But I've hogged the mic for long enough. I'll get back to you.
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